Several years ago, my friend Mark Myers kept posting these amazing photos of King Salmon he would catch in September. I told him I had to get in on that, so last year he invited me along and boy was I hooked (pun intended). After that day, I immediately booked 2 days for the following year. Since then, I’ve been looking forward to this trip, and this time it was epic beyond imagination!
Wednesday, September 11, 2019
I drove to Scott’s house after circuit training at the Pro Club, and arrived about 8:30 a.m. He was there, getting ready to pull the RV out and hook up the Jeep. I loaded my stuff in to the RV, then we hung out for a few minutes waiting for his dad, Charles, to arrive around 9. Around 9:15 Charles pulls up, and we start the process of getting the RV out to the street (yeah, that’s a “process” itself, due to some low hanging electrical wires and cable wires directly above the RV…) so we can hook up the Jeep. Scott has a super cool tow bar that makes it very easy to connect up. I believe we were on the road to the secret spot on the Olympic Peninsula well before 10 a.m.
Traffic wasn’t bad at all, so it took us about 3 hours to get there. We checked in to the RV park, got the RV hooked up and the Jeep unhooked, and we were ready to go explore.
There’s a boat launch in Ocean Shores that Scott’s uncle Larry has been using for many years. We wanted to go check it out, so possibly in the future we can take Scott’s boat down there for a week in August to target kings in the bay. We met up with some really nice local folks who had been kayaking in their Hoby’s (Charles tells me these are really great rigs…) and chatted with them for a bit, then we checked in with the marina manager to find out some details. The guy wasn’t very interested in chatting, but we did learn that it’s only $15 per day to keep your boat in the marina.
We then took a very short drive down the road to another launch point that Charles wanted to check out. We walked a couple hundred yards through the sand on a trail to the beach.
After this, we drove to Scott’s uncles house, about 5 minutes away. They had just come back from a day of fishing in the bay (sadly they didn’t land any on this day, but did catch a bunch of nice Dungeness Crab and gave us some to take back for dinner). It was great to meet Larry and his buddies, they are a nice bunch of guys.
Time to head back to the RV park and check in with the Guide, JP. JP lives in the RV park while he’s guiding this time of year, and we got the spot right next to him. We agreed on a time to meet up the next morning, and went back to make some dinner and hit the hay. For our 3 nights at the RV park, we agreed we’d each take care of dinner one night. Scott was on for Wed, and cooked up some burgers and salad. We then crashed, as there weren’t many hours between then and the alarm…
Thursday, September 12, 3:00 a.m.
When you fish with JP, you gotta be hard core–there’s no time that’s “too early” to get to the secret spot on the river. We had done a bunch of prep the night before, so we were dressed and in the car driving by 3:20. We followed JP to the take out spot on the river, and left the Jeep there. Then jumped JP’s truck and all rode to the launch point. JP’s dad was following as well, so he could return the truck and trailer to the take out spot. Just a short drive away and we were ready to launch the boat–in the pitch dark.
Floating in the dark, mostly full moon behind some clouds
JP rows the boat down the river, and we can already see many King Salmon swimming in the water, rolling over, jumping. Anticipation is high, and about 20 minutes later we are anchored at “the spot”. Now we sit there and wait for the sun to come up.
Waiting for sun to come up
Of course, while we’re on our phones, dozing, etc. JP is getting bait ready for the day. It’s an understatement to say he’s prepared, with live sand-shrimp that he harvests himself the night before, eggs, sardines, herring, and many cuts of tuna (several different brines, of course).
About 6:00 a.m. it’s almost time to fish, but not quite. We’ve been hearing and watching the fish jump all morning in the dark:
About 6:20, it’s finally time to START FISHING!!! The bite was on, almost immediately. I believe on the second cast, Charles hooks and lands a nice native (have to throw those back)–unfortunately I don’t have a picture of that. Scott then pretty quickly lands a native of his own, so we’re catching fish which is awesome but a little bummed that they are both natives.
Fish on!
Scott lands a native!
I don’t recall the exact order of the next 4 fish, and it doesn’t really matter. Let’s just say that by 7:45 both Charles and I had caught our limit for the day (2), and here I’ll just let the pictures tell the story.
Charles fighting a king!
My first keeper!
Charles with a beautiful keeper
Some perspective on how big these fish are
First days catch, before 7:45
JP and Charles
Here’s a view of the river and some other boats that were fishing nearby:
Scott kept fishing until about 10:30, but was not able to land any keepers. We ended the day with 4 beautiful fish, and by all accounts it was an EXCELLENT day of fishing. However, on Wed. night JP had said he thought Friday would be the better day, since some rain was coming in Thursday night. Spoiler alert, he was right…
JP rows us down river a couple of miles, and the scenery is incredible.
Heron
Floating down the river
That evening was my turn for dinner, and we had invited JP and his dad over to join us for ribeye steaks on the grill. Unfortunately his dad couldn’t join us, but we ate well and tried to get down to bed early.
Friday, September 13, 1:50 a.m. (Full moon)
When we launched on Thursday, JP was 3rd in line and there was already at least 1 other boat in the water. JP is never 3rd in line, so we’d fix that on Friday. While the fishing spot we ended up with on Thursday had excellent results, it wasn’t exactly where JP wanted to be. We were driving by 2:10. It’s Friday the 13th on a full moon, and what follows can only be explained by that. JP is launching the boat and we are walking down the river a bit where we’ll meet him and jump in. As we are walking, in the dark, we hear a tree start to fall VERY close to us. It’s cracking, and doesn’t sound good. There’s NO wind, it’s dead calm. We start fast-walking/jogging and this tree falls along the bank. It wasn’t a huge tree, but big enough and the cracking was pretty scary. OK, now we’re awake…
As we float down the river, we are not seeing as many fish roll or jump. There are a few, but definitely less. JP tells us they don’t start rolling until later, and we are over an hour earlier on this day. We row to the same secret spot, and this time we are the first boat there. JP positions the boat, maybe 12 feet upriver from where we were the day before. Before you know, JP says, “Shit, there’s a harbor seal in the water! That’s not good.” Friday the 13th continues to deliver.
As we sit and wait for sunrise, we see the International Space Station drift by in the sky! Scott pulls up an app he has and confirms that indeed, the space station did just fly our location. So cool!
Darkness is fading and were getting ready to fish, but all the guides agree to wait a bit longer than normal, in hopes the harbor seal will go elsewhere. Some anglers had been throwing rocks at him to try and scare him down river. Around 6:35, we start fishing!
Immediately, the bite is on again. I believe Charles lands another native almost immediately, but I’m not sure about that. I do know that on this day, within the first 45 minutes, we have about 8 solid bites and/or actually hook-ups, but don’t land a single fish. Boats all around us are landing fish, and JP is getting a bit frustrated (as are we). But we keep going, and it pays off big!
I don’t have as many “action shots” from the second day, but boy do we have a story and some nice pictures of the final result. At one point, Scott gets a MONSTER fish on, and we see the tail come up out of the water. JP says, “That’s a native, there’s no way it’s a hatchery.” Scott keeps fighting it for a bit, and then we see that it is A HATCHERY. Wow, we’re all excited, but the excitement goes to 11 when we see the harbor seal swim up right behind this huge fish! At this point, we are all thinking there’s no way he’s going to land this fish, you just don’t win against a seal that wants your fish that’s already on a hook. Scott tightens the drag down all the way and just starts reeling as fast as he can! Here’s a video of the action, excuse some of the expletives.
25 lb. King!
A decent days haul
JP getting ready to clean the catch from day 2
These fish were beautiful!
Telling Grandma about day 2
We stopped fishing around 10:45 when we had our limit, so we were off the river by about 12:30. Headed back to the RV to process our fish and vacuum seal it. We decided it would be a good idea to barbecue some for dinner.
Cooler full with 10 fish!
2 days, 10 fish
Processing setup
JP came by and filleted the last 6 fish for us
Ended with close to 80 lbs. of fillets!
Dinner Friday night
Saturday, September 14th
We slept in on this day (badly needed by this point) and had the RV ready to roll by about 9:30. The drive back was nice, hit a bit more traffic than I expected for a Sat. morning.
I’ll finish by saying this trip was EPIC. It will be hard to beat, so many great memories. I’m lucky to have great friends, thanks Mark, Scott and Charles!
